A sensitive person, artist Cao Yinlin was deeply affected by what she describes as a difficult childhood. However, Cao's most recent work, currently showing at the Avant-garde Gallery, indicates that the painter has moved beyond the bitter past, and now enjoys the sweetness of life.
Born in 1970 in Tianjin into a family with historic ties to the Kuomintang, Cao recalls being taunted by peers throughout her childhood. A sensitive child, she eventually found solace in art. ``Perhaps God is rewarding me for enduring those difficult years, because now I live a happy life with my husband in Australia,'' she says. ``Some of my friends have remarked that my current work differs greatly from my earlier paintings.''
Graduating from the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts in 1990, Cao's still-life paintings first attracted the attention of the arts community. ``Due to my family background, I was a very introverted and isolated person. As a way to mitigate my inferiority complex, I looked for concrete subjects to concentrate on, to make me less self-involved and more open to the world. I used a lot of vibrant colors -- perhaps as a counter-balance to my life at the time, which was rather dark and brooding,'' she says.
In 1997, Cao went to Malaysia in a cultural exchange program where she broadened her artistic and personal outlook.
But her real breakthrough came in 2000, when she met her future husband, who would bring her to Australia to start a new life. And after they married, the couple moved down under to begin a new life. ``The sunshine, the sands and the waves brought me closer to nature. It seemed that my lost soul and joy found its way back into my life,'' she says. ``It was there that I made a clean break from my past.''
Instead of the vibrant hues that appeared in her still-life paintings, Cao adopted a more minimalist approach, using her oils sparingly. In her current work, light gray, white and black unify the surface of the canvass into a simple and single spatial plane, reminiscent of traditional ink-wash paintings. ``Such a change in my palette may be attributable to my Chinese roots, or my current harmonious living situation,'' she says.
Also absent from her recent work are ``concrete subjects.'' She now renders an imaginative world where the existing subjects and landscapes are neither concrete nor abstract.
``This `imagistic' style is quite popular in the West. The actual contour is blurred, but the observer is still able to identify the shape of a flower or the presence of a landscape,'' she explains. ``Maybe my paintings reveal that I am finally at peace with the world and with myself.''
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